more than political emancipation. It is this very general sectarianism which compels us to review the philosophy of revolt. These principles apply to the whole of life. All our institutions must be critically examined. The searchlight will not injure them if they are sound.
But how comes this sweetly reasonable philosophy to be converted into that passion for reform, that mordant and exasperating attack on institutions, which gives a special complexion to the literature of our time? For precisely the same reason as the invisible electric current leaps into incandescence when it passes through the sluggish particles of the filament of carbon or tungsten: resistance. The old faith is growing dim in our minds, and we have a suspicion that the thousands of men and women who, each night, terminate a life of pain or struggle or burden, will never see the sun rise again, on this or any other planet. We know that every decade in which we put off, with worn and hollow phrases, the abandonment of old errors, sees another generation pass away with just the same scars and traces of pain as those which scored the hearts of the dead two, and four, and six thousand years ago. We are vividly conscious that, quite apart from the myriads whose lives were embittered by poverty, or war, or a galling marriage-yoke, or the tyranny of some old tradition, there are further and vaster myriads who, whatever comfort they knew, might have been far happier, and now the sun has gone down on them for ever. There is
